“I don’t remember saying you had to learn everything in two days,” Cyril said to me as I yawned so wide I thought my jaw was gonna detach.
“I’m super sleep-deprived because of it, though. I almost fell asleep in lecture earlier, an’ I clenched my teeth together so hard, my jaw hurts.”
“I think you should probably take the day off from work today.”
“Like that’s an option, Myfila. If I took off every time I’m a li’l sleep-deprived, I’d starve to death in an instant.”
After we asked the professor questions following the lecture, the three of us trudged down the hall toward our next class. It could be my fatigue getting the better of me, but the books under my arm felt even heavier than usual.
“Maybe I’ll sleep during the day. I wanted to see the ranking matches to do some reconnaissance round then, though…”
“Leave that to me and Myfila. Please just sleep, Feil.”
“Can I? Sorry for the trouble.”
I had daily classes, work at the pub late into the night, and reading from the magical tome Torrenoxion to do that left me running ragged, but I felt surprisingly fulfilled and optimistic. It felt good to know what I needed to do now. It was straightforward, enjoyable even, to realize that as long as I did what needed to be done, I’d get results.
“Still, I gotta get through this next lecture first. The high-order magic prof has a voice that just lures ya to sleep.”
“Hee-hee. Want me to douse you with water, then?”
“Long as ya got a towel ready for me after.”
The next class we were going to was required for first-years. Because over a hundred students were taking it, it was held in a lecture hall that you’d enter on the second floor of the school building. The hall was circular, like a giant mortar cut in half, and it even looked impressive enough to upstage the giant theater in town.
We’d used up time asking questions earlier, so half the seats would probably already be full. There weren’t even ten minutes until the bell that signaled the start of the next lecture.
“If you catch me snoozin’ during lecture, wake me up. You can even punch me.”
“All right, all right. I’ll wake you up like a normal person.”
I pushed open the large, grand doors, when—“Bwuh!”—for some reason, I found myself soaking wet.
An orb of water about big enough to fit in someone’s arms had hit the top of the door frame and burst, mostly landing on me. It’d all happened the moment I’d opened the door, and I hadn’t even been able to react.
Still dry behind me, Cyril asked, “Want me to get a towel ready for you?”
I launched into the lecture hall, driven by rage.
“Who in the hell did this?!”
But…when I saw the unexpected sight in front of me, even as I had my fist readied in the air, I stopped, and all I could manage was a “What the…?”
The chairs and desks in the staircase-style lecture hall were overturned all over the place on every single tier of the hall. Even the podium at the base of the hall had been flipped over, and the place sure wasn’t ready for a class to start.
“…The hell is goin’ on…?”
I counted five summons. One water elemental that took the shape of a heavily armed knight standing at four mejals tall. And four bare women with giant wings on their outstretched arms and bird legs from the knee down—harpies.
When the harpies cried out, they would raise up a whirlwind, bringing up desks and chairs to assault the water elemental in the form of a knight. The elemental had turned its left forearm into a thick water shield that it used to block each item of furniture hurled at it.
“Did I get the wrong classroom?”
“No, Feil Fonaf, but how terribly unfortunate for you.”
I turned toward the direction the voice had come from and found a cheery brunette staring at me and trying to hold back a laugh. It was Lulua Folicker. She was also with her two teammates.
“Ha-ha-ha! Looks like it’s your lucky day, Feil, my mate! If that’d hit you straight on, you would have had an appointment with the infirmary!”
“Gh-Ghol, it’s rude to laugh.”
I wiped my face with my sopping wet sleeve as I headed over to their side. “I’m not following. Startin’ up a summonin’ battle isn’t supposed to be as everyday as droppin’ an eraser in class.”
The gigantic knight brandished the blue and transparent sword in its right hand. That sent a bunch of water orbs of different sizes flying through the air, but none of them hit the harpies.
Instead, they smashed into the walls and flew at us.
“Holy Shield.”
The defensive light-magic spell Lulua incanted blocked the water orbs. It was surprisingly big and enveloped not only her and her teammates, but also me, Cyril, Myfila, and five or six other students nearby.
“Nice.”
“You all almost broke the spell, though,” she told me.
Once I was in Lulua’s safe area, my earlier rage subsided for the moment. Looking at the entirety of the lecture hall from the top level, I more or less gleaned what had happened.
That nasty aristocrat, Bernhart Hadcheck, was fighting a redheaded girl.
“How’d you like that?! What’s wrong, Julietta?! Where’s that lesson you were gonna teach me?!”
“Urgh. I can’t lose. Help me, Olupeia!”
Now that I was thinking about it, that knight was Bernhart’s Counterpart, and Bernhart liked the girl, so he’d sometimes pick fights with her.
The fifty or so students who’d already gathered for class had withdrawn into a corner of the hall and were focused on keeping out of the warpath of the desks and water orbs. The only ones hooting and hollering, playing the audience, were Bernhart’s own cronies.
“They’re fightin’…but why hasn’t anybody tried stoppin’ them? Nobody’s actually ’fraid of Bernhart.”
Lulua gave me a strained smile.
“You do realize he’s still a summons-festival participant, right? But right, I suppose no one’s intervened since Julietta staked her pride on this duel.”
“Her pride? Then she’d have to duel ’im every time she sees that mug of his.”
“It’s Julietta’s mother… Apparently, well…she works at a brothel. Used to, rather.”
“Doesn’t sound that unusual to me.”
“I didn’t hear it directly, though. And then I have no idea how he heard about it, but apparently, Bernhart was talking about it. And then he told Julietta…that since she has the blood of a prostitute, she might as well date him. And that she should be happy for him to have chosen her as his mistress…”